In the past two weeks I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of your contacts posting status updates telling you that someone has managed to log on to their account and started spreading a message on Messenger where they tell you that they want to share a video with you. When you click on this link, your own Facebook logon information is stolen, and then YOU start spreading the message. The link can also install a virus onto your computer. In this article I describe what you can do to prevent this from happening.

Does Facebook really ruin democracy? Yes, it does. And in this blog posting I will tell you, and provide documentation on, why that is. Did you know Brexit most likely happened because of fake news on Facebook?

Another security scandal at Facebook. My, how the week has flown. Yesterday it was revealed that Facebook has, once again, tried to cover up a security scandal. And this one is just inexcusable. Change your password immediately. This is how you do it!

Sometimes you can become too suspicious when you receive an email about a security breach in one of your many online or social media accounts. I thought that two emails I received from Facebook were phishing attempts. Turns out they were genuine. This is how you can check whether an email from Facebook is genuine or not!

In the past few days there have been numerous postings and articles in presumptive serious magazines and tech blogs that claim if you are posting a photo of what you looked like ten years ago, and what you look like today, it will make you vulnerable when it comes to what Facebook knows about you. It’s not any more dangerous than what Facebook already knows about you. And they know a LOT! Let me show you exactly how much.

I’m sure you’ve received them too. Friend requests from sexy bikini clad women who suddenly wants to be your friend. Or maybe you’ve received a friend request from a smiling man from Nigeria, who desperately wants to be your friend, so that you can help him with some money transfers?

On of the most frequently asked questions I get about Facebook is how you can search for things that are posted there. Things just fly by in the news stream, and as long as you don’t save something to look at it later, you might never see it again. Or maybe you’d like to find something you posted yourself a long time ago? Let me show you how easy it is to search Facebook.

A little under two weeks ago I attended the LION 18 conference in Chicago. LION is short for Local Independent Online News and is an organisation for local news sites. Little did I know all the reactions I would get when I tweeted my surprise over how in bed Facebook is with local news sites and newspapers in the US.

Last Friday 50 million Facebook users woke up and discovered that they had been logged out of Facebook. Not just one place, but on their computer, cellphone, the Messengar app and on all devices where they had used Facebook as their logon method. Facebook is saying that there’s no need for their users to do anything. Don’t listen to Facebook! Change your password now!

How do people find you on Facebook?
People can usually find you by searching for you, or maybe even Facebook suggests you as a friend for others. But you can exercise some control over this. In the left menu in Settings, go to Privacy and find the section called How People Find and Contact You:
Here you can set who should be able to send you a friend request, if external search engines should be able to find you on Facebooks and how people can search and find you.

Control who sees what on your timeline and who sees your tags?
You can also control who should see what you post, and you can even control who should see postings you are tagged in. Go to Timeline and Tagging the left menu under Settings. There you will find all these settings:

Block anything you want
Go to Blocking in the left side menu of Settings. You will now get a screen where you can do the following:
– Put people on a Restricted list, which means you can keep people as friends, but hide all postings from them that you share with friends only
– Block users, which means they are unfriended, can’t search for you, contact you, send you messages or see your profile
– Block messages, you can stop users from sending you messages on Messenger. However, they will still be able to post on your profile, if you are friends
– Block app invites, you can add friends who keeps sending you invites to apps to a list here
– Block event invites, you can add friends you don’t want event invites from here
– Block apps, here is where you add nametests.com and all other apps (let’s face it, all those apps are annoying)
– Block pages, yup, you can even block entire Facebook pages

Which language do you want?
Go to Language in the left side menu of Settings. Here you can set the following:
– What language should your Facebook be in
– What language do you want postings in other languages to automatically be translated to and which languages you don’t want to translate
– Set your postings to be posted in several languages at once

What should you be notified about?
Yes, Facebook keeps coming up with new ways to annoy you with notifications. However, you can turn these on and off as you please via the Notifications menu in the left side menu of Settings:
– On Facebook: here you can set in detail what sort of notifications that should pop up under the notification bell on Facebook. Do yourself a favour and go through this!
– Email: Turn on and off what notifications you want to receive emails from Facebook about
– Desktop and Mobile: Here you can control all the pop ups, buzzing and beeps you can get from Facebook, both on your cell phone and on your computer
– Text message: Turn on and off what sort of text messages Facebook can send to your cell phone.

What can the public see?
Under Public Posts in the left side menu of Settings you can control who can follow your public posts (you can be followed by people who aren’t friends, unless you turn this off), comment on them, who can like or comment on public photos or profile info, if you want to have rankings on comments, your public Facebook name and if you want to connect a Twitter account to your Facebook (this means your postings will be posted on Twitter, with a link to your Facebook post).

What does your Facebook profile look like?
Have you ever wondered what your Facebook profile looks like to other people? Facebook has a really neat way to let you do this. Go to Public Posts in the left side menu of the Settings page:
At the bottom there is a link called Want to know what followers can see? View your public timeline:Click on this. Your profile will now open up, and you will be able to see how your profile looks for people who are not in your friends list:
At the top of your profile, above your Facebook profile photo you see this:Click on this. A search field will now appear and you can search for any of your friends. Click on the name of the person you want to check and you will now see your profile just like that person will see it.